Brave minds: Scheu and Schaltegger receive the Freedom Prize 2025!

Brave minds: Scheu and Schaltegger receive the Freedom Prize 2025!

René Scheu and Christoph Schaltegger were awarded the Bonny Foundation's Freedom Prize 2025. At the ceremonial award ceremony in the Kursaal Bern, Beat Brechbühl, Vice President of the Bonny Foundation, praised her ability to think freely and remain objective without acting in a biased manner. Brechbühl emphasized that both award winners are being honored for their courage, which led them to found the Institute for Swiss Economic Policy (IWP) at the University of Lucerne.

The IWP aims to promote a liberal economic policy and to rely on scientific facts. Funded by private donations, the institute has achieved an important place in Switzerland's economic policy discourse within four years. The central issues include high wages in the federal administration and the efficiency of state subsidies. It also discusses how economic advancement opportunities in Switzerland can be improved.

Commitment to research and the public

Scheu, who was active as a finance scientist and as the founding dean of the economics faculty, and Schaltegger, the philosopher and features editor of the NZZ, left their previous positions in 2021 to create the IWP. An important goal of the institute is to make research results accessible to a wider audience. Schaltegger and Scheu show that liberal economic policy can have a positive influence on prosperity and freedom.

The Bonny Foundation has been awarding the Freedom Prize since 2013, which is endowed with 100,000 francs. Previous winners include well-known personalities such as Kaspar Villiger and Monika Bütler.

Functional medicine in transition

Parallel to this economic policy commitment, the concept of functional medicine is also becoming increasingly important. This approach focuses on the holistic well-being of individuals and goes beyond conventional medicine, which often only treats symptoms. The goal is to identify and address the root causes of disease.

Functional medicine offers tailored solutions for chronic diseases that have not been adequately treated in the past. This is done through detailed medical history and comprehensive discussions of medical histories, including possible family medical histories and past treatment experiences.

Diverse treatment options

A typical first functional medicine appointment can take longer than a traditional doctor's visit. The treatment plan is created individually and can include various approaches such as bio-identical hormone therapy, thyroid optimization or stem cell therapy.

• Behandlungsfähige Erkrankungen umfassen:
• Arthritis
• Allergien und Nahrungsmittelunverträglichkeiten
• Asthma
• Autoimmunerkrankungen
• Herz-Kreislauf-Erkrankungen
• Krebs
• Müdigkeit
• Diabetes
• Fibromyalgie
• Gastrointestinale Störungen
• Schlafstörungen
• Gewichtszunahme

Additionally, functional medicine treats reproductive health issues, supports patients with menopausal symptoms, and can improve fertility. A location at Blend Institute in Bradenton also includes psychiatric care to treat mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety disorders and ADHD.

Scheu and Schaltegger's award, together with the growing influence of functional medicine, makes it clear that both economic and health innovations are crucial for improving the population's standard of living and well-being.